'The More I See You'

The More I See You.mp3


....the more i want you
....somehow this feeling just grows and grows

'The More I See You' is a tune I've been listening to for over ten years. Chet recorded it several times.

Like many of my favorite sides, The More I See You, the version I most love, appears on his 1958 recording entitled: It Could Happen to You. This is the album I would recommend for CHet novices. It includes a nice mix of vocals when he was younger and horn work that reflects what i believe to be some of his most prolific sides.

Chet Baker Sings - It Could Happen To You (Riverside RLP 12-278)

Chet Baker (tp, vo) Kenny Drew (p) Sam Jones (b) Philly Joe Jones (d)

NYC, August, 1958

So remember i said it seems that there comes a time during every session where i hit the wall and say "i can't do this shit!"

well true to form it came during the session friday (that would be august 28th for those of you keeping track). the flavor so to speak, of this point of saturation, has a flavor all its own. this particular flavor had to do with engineering; the nuts and bolts of tweaking knobs and pushing buttons.

These are virtual knobs and virtual buttons i'm speaking of here of course. back in the day they would be real ones. and in a way i think that would be better, a little more real, more charming perhaps. they'd be grey or black with knurled surfaces. maybe they'd have a nice soft rubbery feel that would make you want to fiddle with them just for the hell of it, even if you didn't want to change their settings.

These knobs and buttons are made to look like the real deals but really, they're just graphics on a computer screen; they could be pictures of greeting cards or refrigerators for that matter. they're not particularly endearing, at least not to me. and why does this matter? it doesn't. i'm pretty much just whining. about technology and how i really shouldn't have to put up with this shit because i have bigger, more creative fish to fry. creative fish? did i really just type that?

Anyway, i reached this particular flavor-o-the-day frustration on account of this:

I had chosen the tune "The More I See You" and decided to first lay a rhythm track to play against when it came time to lay down a piano part and a bass part and a vox and a horn, you know...

Well is seemed to make sense to me at the time so i figured i'd lay a simple brush and hat figure down for say, 8 or 16 bars and then just loop it for the rest of the tune, to save time and whatnot seeing as how these tunes are not really meant to be much more than practice vehicles. so i laid it down, pressed ctrl C and copied it for about 175 measures, thinking that that would be in the ballpark for the length of the song.

OK. so far so good. Except I couldn't figure out how to make a real honest-to-God loop. I mean I could just do what i said i'd do and what i've been doing: recording a few bars and copying it, but if i was going to be doing a similar sort of thing throughout this entire project, why not make a friggin loop to be saved and dialed up anytime i wanted it? right. good idea.

But alas, after a few unsuccessful attempts i figured instead of stopping, firing up the pdf of the Reaper Help (which sometimes is more like 'customer no-service than anything) i would just do the copy deal and jot down a note.

HOW DO YOU MAKE A LOOP? is what i scrawled in my little 37-cent spiral back-to-school bargain i got the last time i was in Target. best deal i've gotten since the time i accidentally scored a $97 on-line ticket overseas for my son back before the shit hit the fan and i blew my life apart. but i digress.

Well things went pretty smoothly through my making up and laying down a short intro for the tune...just a little ii-V-I turnaround with a C pedal (have i mentioned that the tune is in F major?)

But this is how this goes sometimes. You see, it seems it's when you think things are going swimmingly (whatever the fuck that means) that things tend to go south. And indeed this is what happened.

You see, i laid the intro down without incident, nailed it on the first pass. i was pretty pleased with it so i moved on to begin learning and laying down the changes on piano. well yeah. good idea. and i say, it was all going well except for the fact that the volume was low for some reason.

Why the hell am i having trouble hearing the keys. the level seems hot enough on the meter for the track i assigned it to...the monitor is on, the level is tweaked, the ProKeys (my piano) is doing its talking thing with the MIDI audio interface (my USB Edirol UA 25 EX). so what the hell is going on.

If you were to see me on a closed circuit tv screen, watching me at my little workstation in the corner of my living/dining room, with the windows blinded against the Texas inferno outside, my little fan (that just that day shit the bed and passed away finally after i don't know how many years spent in Al's basement, study, office, TV room and workbench), my horn and mic stand and little Yamaha studio monitors (the ones that rattle every time the bass levels wander anywhere close to human expression)

If you could see me during these times of befuddlement (electronic, engineering, or musical) i think you'd be bored. bored because i am nearly motionless, just staring in shocked, annoyed, pissed off disbelief. how the fuck is happening? i have everything set the way it should be......................................

wait for it..............................................

OH SHIT. Goddamnit!!!

Then fill in the blank for whatever flavor of the day's cup-runneth-over moment.
This particular hideous mistake was really quite simply and annoyingly simple.

Maddening actually. You see, the day before the track that i was working on was laying a vocal line. and so what do i have plugged in the USB Edirol UA25 EX?

Yes, the mic cable. You dumb shit. So, the result was, there was only one side of my Prokeys piano going into the Edirol, hence only one side being recorded, hence only mono signal not a stereo signal was being recorded HENCE IT WAS REALLY QUIET.

YOU DUMB ASS.

So unplug the mic cable, plug in the other piano feed and do the whole thing over again...sheesh. This is how we learn isn't it....isn't it?

Well yes, but as it turns out, we really don't have to lose something to learn.

More on this in the next post.

Talk among yourselves........